Melinda Vonstein - From Rollerblades to Regional Trails

[00:00:05] Dominique: Welcome to Green Champions. 

[00:00:06] Christy: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:10] Dominique: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Dominique.

[00:00:16] Christy: And I'm Christy.

[00:00:17] Dominique: Today we're excited to welcome another guest as part of our miniseries with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, also known as MORPC, and we're highlighting the people and ideas driving sustainability across Central Ohio ahead of MORPC's annual Summit on Sustainability. 

[00:00:31] Christy: In this miniseries, you'll meet a few of the people you can expect to see at this year's summit, and we're gonna also be there, so we'll be right alongside you. We're excited about that. And today, we are joined by Melinda Vonstein. She is the Greenways Planning Studio lead at MORPC, where she works to plan and expand Central Ohio greenways and strengthen connections between communities across the region.

Thank you for joining us today, Melinda.

[00:00:55] Melinda: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:56] Dominique: Okay, Melinda, I have to kick us off with the fact that we previously spoke to Brandi, for the miniseries, and when I asked her what's one important thing we should know about Melinda, before our recording, she was like, "You have to ask about her backyard gardening." So maybe we should start there.

[00:01:13] Melinda: Yeah. I've been gardening for a while. I started getting into it with my family a little over a decade ago, just as a casual hobby. It all started, one day we accidentally broke a glass table in our backyard, and we didn't know how to pick up the shattered glass.

So we were like, "I guess we just dig up this grass." And we built a patio and then big planters around it. And then it just continued as a casual hobby for a while, but then the pandemic happened, and that was a weird time for all of us. But my family and I, we kinda just started taking gardening to the next level during that time.

We were able to acquire a second plot of land next to our urban plot. We just started tearing up grass, digging water retention areas using all of the rainwater off of the roofs in really interesting ways. Today I think that I don't really just plant plants in a garden.

I don't even know if I call it a garden. I think what we're doing is intentionally cultivating an entire ecosystem using principles of healthy forest. Thinking about habitats and beauty and resilience and, really we're including edible plants, useful plants, medicinal plants, and beautiful plants all in one space 

And we've actually seen year after year it just becomes easier to maintain and more abundant, and we have more stuff, more food, more unique food like kiwi berries growing. We make plenty of jam for my entire family of five for an entire year just with fruit we harvest from the backyard. 

[00:02:44] Dominique: That's incredible. And before this table broke, you didn't do any of this stuff? there was nothing there when you were first digging up that grass? 

[00:02:51] Melinda: No, we had one apple tree just in the middle of the backyard and that was it. That came with the house.

[00:02:58] Dominique: So if I walked into your backyard right now, how big is this garden? Can you paint us kind of a mental picture?

[00:03:04] Melinda: It's probably an eighth of an acre maybe. But we use all layers. when you walk into my backyard, you walk under a trellis of grapevines. 

I mean, right now we're fighting with the spotted lanternflies to make sure that our grapes continue to survive. So you would be asked to squash spotted lanternflies when you enter my garden.

But then there's just like all sorts of things. We have kiwi berry vines in another area. My kids have a fort underneath that area that's really well shaded. And, I really like berries with whimsical names, so we grow gooseberries and raspberries and loganberries. So yeah, you'd find all of those little treats, and also just pretty flowers and a pond with fish, and sometimes we have frogs. Once I saw a snake. 

[00:03:50] Christy: Are you finding that you're getting more songbirds as well now too over time or not?

[00:03:55] Melinda: Maybe. This morning I saw a hummingbird on my kale, and I was like, "I didn't know hummingbirds liked kale." But I was like, "Okay, that's cool." I've been thinking about birds a lot lately. I think I read somewhere that since I was a kid, our bird population has decreased by, 60% don't quote me on any of the numbers.

[00:04:12] Dominique: We're not a fact-based podcast.

[00:04:15] Melinda: I feel like I don't see as many birds just in general as I remembered seeing

growing up. 

[00:04:21] Christy: Yeah. Songbirds in particular have been hit hard by various pesticides and urbanization. And so I'm kind of obsessed with them myself, and thinking about how I can see you creating that urban forest being a refuge and safe space to nest, and just being a great thing as well. 

[00:04:42] Melinda: Yeah. there was a period of time when I decided that I needed something else to take care of, so I raised quail in my garden, 'cause they have cute eggs, and I really wanted those cute eggs. And when I had quail, there was a hawk that would, circle the top of my garden, and that hawk kept all the bunnies out of my garden, and that was a really abundant year because of that hawk.

So, I don't have quail anymore. Maybe one year I'll get them so that I can get the hawk back and get the bunnies back out of my garden. 

[00:05:14] Christy: That's a solid point. And I love thinking about ecosystems, right? 'Cause that's what you're creating. You're creating this ecosystem. 

[00:05:21] Melinda: Exactly. 

[00:05:21] Christy: I love what you're doing. Keep doing it. We need more urban spaces with ecosystems. It's amazing.

[00:05:28] Melinda: Less grass. 

[00:05:29] Christy: Less grass, less pesticides. And I love how you mentioned being able to take advantage of the rainwater from your roof, so building those kind of waterways within that. That's amazing. It's so much fun. 

Because I bet the kids are like, "Oh my gosh, this is a playground." What are you seeing from your kids when they're out there doing that

exploring? 

[00:05:48] Melinda: I mean, I just love watching my kids in the garden. I have this general rule for myself that my kids can't get in trouble for stepping on anything in the garden. it's fine. The plant will be okay. This is an ecosystem for all of us to enjoy. And even when I have other friends over, they'll say, "Don't step in the garden.

Make sure you stay on the paths." And I'm like, "No, no." they can go where they want. We're not going to have rules like that in the garden. So it's cute to see them, you know, run over to the pond or, my son really likes the three-leaf clovers that are edible, so he'll eat those. And it's just cute that the kids are always running out to see what they can eat, and somehow they will eat way more vegetables if they pick them out of the garden than if I serve them to them in the kitchen.

[00:06:35] Christy: I found the same thing. And my nieces and nephews also love the idea of the caterpillars, monarchs for example. So I don't know if you happen to have any milkweed in there. Kids seem to really love the caterpillars too.

[00:06:51] Melinda: Yeah, and the worms. They really like to collect the worms and move them from one part of the garden to another part, so I love that. my son is nine now, and I think he's starting to realize that it's not normal to have a garden like what we have. Most people don't have, like, four types of grapes growing in their backyard, and gooseberries and honeyberries.

And every year in the spring, he's like, "We have to make sure that we stay on top of the garden this year so that we can get enough food.

[00:07:20] Christy: I love that.

[00:07:21] Dominique: My whole heart. Yeah, I was gonna comment that there's no better way to teach kids about where their food comes from. And I also can only imagine if you're accustomed to that being in your backyard, going over to a friend's house and going out into the yard and it's just grass, like how much of a bummer that would be.

Yeah, he does like to run in a grassy field. I will take him to a park where he can do that.

Yeah, I'm sure. Well, another love of yours, and this is gonna fold right into the work that you're doing too, is transportation in itself. And so can you tell us maybe like where that started for you? And then we can hear more about what you're doing now.

Yeah. I think I have just been cultivating this interest throughout my whole life. I think that planning in general, like urban planning, transportation planning is an ecosystem in of itself. Our cities are ecosystems, so I think I like thinking in terms of systems, in general. the way that I think about gardening is very similar to the way that I think about transportation planning.

[00:08:21] Melinda: You know, everything is interconnected. Land use, public space, trees, businesses and people, we're all interconnected and everything that we do, relates to everything else. I think that just the way my brain works lends me to think about things like planning cities and ecosystems, in ways that maybe not everyone's brain does.

But I also grew up using all kinds of different transportation, and I don't know if I necessarily thought about it in that way, that I was engaging in all different types of transportation behaviors. But I was really lucky enough to live near a major trail network in Dayton, Ohio. So from a very young age, I was grabbing my rollerblades and rollerblading all over the place, sometimes riding a bike.

But rollerblading was my trail mode of choice for many years. I still am happiest when I'm on skates, I think. I don't do it as much anymore. And then in high school I started takingpublic transportation, taking the bus. I could get downtown, I could get to friends' houses, I could get all over the place.

And I don't think as a kid I was thinking about the fact that I was lucky enough to have all of these different transportation opportunities around me and that was kind of my ticket to freedom and to experiencing the world. But, it really was and it was pretty unique to get to live in a place like that and have parents that were okay with me adventuring the city alone.

[00:09:43] Dominique: Yeah. And I also just feel like rollerblading is coolest mode of transport. I feel like there's just nothing that sounds cooler.

[00:09:51] Melinda: Yeah. So places were a little closer together here in Central Ohio. Rollerblading on the trails would be the best transportation option.

[00:09:58] Dominique: Yeah. And we're gonna get into all the trails in Central Ohio in specific in our next episode, which I'm very excited about. But before you were at MORPC, and it, there's definitely a big window here where we're talking about your first discovery of this being a big part of your upbringing.

But you also worked with COTA, which is Central Ohio Transit Authority for those that are not in the region. Obviously a big opportunity to be working in public transportation. But did you study this stuff in school before you had that role?

[00:10:26] Melinda: My undergraduate degree is in architecture. And as I started my career and getting my first internship in architecture, I realized that maybe I wanted to think a little bit more broadly about how buildings are situated into our communities and how people navigate throughout our communities.

And so I got a master's in city and regional planning. While I was getting that degree, I actually worked at Ohio State. I managed the wayfinding program for the Ohio State University Hospitals, and that was just a really interesting first career in planning. Maybe wayfinding doesn't sound like a transportation related field, but really it is.

It's about getting people to and from, helping people navigate an environment, and particularly in a hospital, helping people navigate a new environment when they're in some of the most stressful and vulnerable moments in their lives. my work there involved supporting people when they were in their most vulnerable state, helping them navigate with maps, visitor information, signs, all sorts of things.

So it wasn't just about getting people to their appointment, but it was really about helping people move in a way where they weren't confused and where their needs were being met before they even knew that they had a need, and that they could feel confident navigating through an environment.

I think that early opportunity in my career to think so deeply about wayfinding has shaped how I think about transportation, as well. 

[00:11:50] Dominique: That is so interesting because anybody who walks into a hospital, the last thing they are thinking about was how they were gonna get around. They just want that to be made available to them. And that also feels like coming from an architecture background, where you're thinking about our built environment, you have to have a deep understanding of how people think. You have to have an understanding of psychology and just the way people interact with each other, and was that a learning curve? , What was the biggest maybe surprise in learning the world of wayfinding coming from maybe a built environment perspective? 'Cause I feel like you have so much to consider in doing that.

[00:12:24] Melinda: I think the biggest surprise, and it's still something that pops up anytime I have a trail wayfinding project or any sort of wayfinding project, is that very few people think about it. And when an agency or an organization is thinking about a wayfinding project, they're like, "Oh, we gotta get some signs in. Let's just install the sign and it'll fix all of the problems."

Wayfinding is more than just a couple of signs. It's a whole system. It's like you said, it's the psychology. How do people feel in a space? It's not just a sign. The sign has to be in a location that somebody's naturally gonna look.

And a lot of times wayfinding is less about a sign and more about just the psychology of how people move through a space.

[00:13:04] Christy: How do you go about investigating that psychology of how people move in a space? What is that process like?

[00:13:11] Melinda: I don't know. I wonder if it's, just intuitive. I think when we're in a space that we feel like we belong in, we're comfortable. If we're in a space where we don't belong or we just kinda feel icky or we gotta get out of a space. So, I think about bus stops.

There are certain bus stops throughout the region that if there aren't basic amenities like trees, some distance from traffic or a sidewalk or all of the basic amenities that you just need to have a dignified experience existing, if those aren't there, then, you don't want to be there and it's hard to kinda navigate.

[00:13:44] Dominique: Yeah. And then you went to work with, we're bringing it up right now? The whole idea of bus stops, you worked with COTA. So what was that experience like? What was your role with COTA in terms of now getting into the public transportation space?

[00:13:55] Melinda: Yeah. I think when I shifted over to COTA, a lot of people were surprised. They were like, "Oh, how is that even related to facility planning or to wayfinding?" And, in my mind, I was like, it's the same thing. We're talking about how people navigate through the world. So, my role at COTA was at the time, was the largest transit system redesign in COTA's history.

We relocated thousands of bus stops. So I worked on service planning, thinking about where bus stops should be placed, park and ride coordination, engaging with the public, and really thinking about ridership patterns and development, how development patterns affect ridership.

[00:14:30] Dominique: And was that because the city had changed over time? What was the heart of the need for that change?

[00:14:36] Melinda: I think the reason that COTA at the time was considering that transit system redesign is because it had originally been a hub and spoke. So if you needed to go anywhere and you were outside of downtown, you had to take a bus into downtown, transfer to another bus to go to whatever location you wanted to go.

It was very hub and spoke, and they kinda transitioned away from hub and spoke and made it more gridded. you could get from Easton to Eastland or from one suburb to another suburb without coming through downtown. 

[00:15:03] Christy: I think that is so smart and clearly a need. 

 I think that it's a part of economic development as well, perhaps that's not as often talked about, or maybe it is, but for me, I've never thought about public transportation in that specific way. 

[00:15:19] Melinda: Yeah. All of what we're doing in developing our cities is totally interconnected. Many planners do talk to each other, but I think there's even more opportunities for us to see those connections between our various disciplines 'cause they're all related.

[00:15:32] Dominique: And then that experience at COTA led you to where you are now with MORPC. Can you tell us about what you took from that experience and how it led you to the role you're in now with the Central Ohio Greenways?

[00:15:44] Melinda: Yeah. I think when I transitioned to MORPC, I was able to see trails as core transportation infrastructure as well as part of the same network and system that I was helping develop at COTA. So, trails, transit, and how people get around the city are all interconnected, and a lot of times people are walking to a bus stop or they're walking to their car.

So all of our transportation networks are intertwined. I think that step over to MORPC was pretty natural. I think my experience both in wayfinding and in transit taught me to kinda think about how to complete a journey, how someone finds a route, how they reach it, how they feel safe traveling along a route.

And we'll probably talk about this in a later segment, but that kind of history and all of my experience of planning and dedicating time to planning routes from a very young age, thinking about how I use the trail infrastructure, the walking and biking infrastructure, and the transit infrastructure to help me get around.

I've spent hours and hours and hours of time, thinking about that for my own personal use. And so just this year, we developed this new map product where if somebody is new to biking, they wanna try it out, they don't have to commit all of that time to planning it all out. We've curated about seven trail trips that are really fun for people, so we can tell them where to park their bike, where all the scenic selfie spots are, where they might be able to grab a bite on their trip and really plan it out so that the barrier to entry when it comes to cycling in our city is really lowered.

 'Cause there is a lot of labor and dedication and commitment and thought that goes into planning a trip that's not centered around a car.

[00:17:24] Christy: Yes. So true. And maybe this is simple, but I don't wanna make any assumptions. Just for sake of any audience members listening, could you tell us what a greenway is?

[00:17:33] Melinda: Sure. So when I say greenway and when we talk about greenway at MORPC, we're talking about a trail that is park-like, a linear park. So the Olentangy Trail, the Alum Creek Trail, some of those major river trails here in Central Ohio. They're paved. They're used for both recreation and transportation.

[00:17:51] Christy: It sounds amazing. And so if someone were to visit, or lives here now and is interested in this, tell us a little bit about what these network of trails, why are they so valuable, and what role does it play in the region?

[00:18:08] Melinda: Yeah. Central Ohio Greenways is a network of over 400 miles of trails. We have a vision for 1,000 miles of connected regional trails in our 15-county Central Ohio region. These trails really serve as the backbone of our active transportation network and our outdoor recreation network. they are the major walking and biking infrastructure that gets people from their homes to their jobs, connects neighborhoods to the places people wanna go, and also connect to local parks and our major metro parks and outdoor spaces.

[00:18:42] Dominique: And next time we're also gonna get into what blue ways are and active transportation plans. And I am just very excited to talk about all the things underneath your umbrella. 

I also just think the love you have for this work is so apparent and I love the way that you've brought your personal experience and growing up navigating public transit and your own recreation into the work that you're doing.

And you have a very human community-centered approach to the work that you're doing. I think that shows through in the ways that we have really awesome spaces. I also have a friend who just did a cross-country bike ride, California to New York, and you kind of pick up friends along the way who are also riding. And he was saying, "We fell in love with the trails in Ohio."

Nobody expected Ohio to have amount of protected trail ways. And we have more ground coverage than most states.

Whereas some states might have the longest connected line across the state, we have the most general distance you can bike that's safe. 

[00:19:43] Melinda: I think we should claim that. We also have a very long distance fully protected trail in Ohio. You can travel from Cleveland, Ohio through Columbus to Cincinnati on the Ohio to Erie Trail. It's mostly all trail separated from the roadway, and the number of people that are doing this, from end to end, bike packing, has just really exploded over the last five or six years.

So I think that we can claim we have the best trails in Central Ohio. So I ride the Olentangy Trail to work every so often. Not as much as I'd like, but every time I do I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is so beautiful. It's the best way to get to work." And I've also recently been riding trails in other places, and I'm not sure that trails in other places are comparing to the Olentangy 

[00:20:32] Christy: Yeah.

truly 

[00:20:33] Melinda: I think it might be the best one. 

[00:20:34] Dominique: I'm an Ohio to Erie Trail fan, and Olentangy comes, a close second for me. But we have so much to appreciate that I did not appreciate was not as available elsewhere. So I'm very excited to get into how you're doing that, where it's going next, and I think you're gonna help open our eyes to appreciating how you're bringing this all together.

So very excited for next time. I also think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about MORPC's Summit on Sustainability, as part of kind of what we're doing this mini series. So Melinda, do you have anything you wanna share with us in terms of what you think folks can take away from the event or what you get excited about when it comes to the summit?

[00:21:10] Melinda: Yeah. So the Summit on Sustainability is just a really great opportunity for people that care about sustainability or what's happening in our region in general, to come together and reflect and connect with each other about everything that we're doing. what I'm most excited about is to see all of the people that have been participating in our shared visioning of our Greenways network.

This vision is not my vision. This is a co-creation of hundreds of people in our region throughout many decades, being passionate, visionary, and thoughtful about how we build out this network. I'm excited to come together with all of those thought leaders, meet new thought leaders, and hopefully together we can expand our vision for Greenways and connect with other people that are thinking about sustainability programs that are happening in our region.

[00:22:01] Christy: I love it. Where can people go to find out more about the summit?

[00:22:05] Melinda: So yeah, if you want to attend the Summit on Sustainability on October 28th, you can check it out on morpc.org/summitonsustainability. And if you wanna learn more about the Central Ohio Greenways work, you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook, or go to centralohiogreenways.com

[00:22:23] Christy: Thank you so much for your time today. We really were excited about this conversation. We're looking forward to more discussion on The Greenway, so thank you again for being here.

[00:22:31] Melinda: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

[00:22:32] Christy: Each guest brings a different approach to sustainability. We're here to highlight the people doing the work that inspires others because climate action takes many forms.

[00:22:40] Dominique: As always, you can find our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. If you enjoyed the episode, you can follow, subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. You can find us on LinkedIn and Instagram, @greenchampionspod. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll back with the second half of Melinda's success story in our next episode.